The burden and blessing of mortality

AUTHOR(S)

Jonas, Hans

PUB. DATE

January 1992

SOURCE

Hastings Center Report;Jan/Feb92, Vol. 22 Issue 1, p34

SOURCE TYPE

Academic Journal

DOC. TYPE

Article

ABSTRACT

States that metabolism is a continued reclaiming of life, ever reasserting the value of being against its lapse into nothingness. The possibility of death is the burden with which life struggles; Death's necessity is life's blessing; Even the sickest of us wants to go on living, but thinking and sensing, not merely digesting.

Deals with the author's ten-minute discussion with a 91-year-old man considering his death. Description of the ex-banker-patient; Beginning the consultation by telling him he could only be spared a few minutes; Examinations made.

Opinion. Discusses the philosophy behind death. Society's tendency to regard death as an unwelcome event; Integration of the experience of death into people's communal and personal lives; Persistence of culture that denies the experience of death.